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These photographs are just a few I have taken over the last ten years at The Albany Bulb, also known as the Landfill, the Waterfront and just The Bulb. It is a place I feel passionate about. That much is obvious.
There are many of us who believe that this piece of the much hyped Eastshore State Park should have been left untouched and unmanaged - because it is a unique example of what happens when a place naturally and organically self regulates. But the dogma of 'preservation' and 'conservation areas' 'resource protection', 'habitats' and 'liability' overrules all individual identity. They cannot leave anything untouched, un-designed. It is as if if they (the park planners) didn't make it, it has no value.
Rules, guidelines, regulations, interpretive signage, fences, safety, sanctioned art - it leaves nothing to the imagination. That is what the landfill meant to us - a place of unlimited imagination.

August 18, 2008

show some emotion

I get nervous that these blogs of unrestrained personal exploration make some uncomfortable. I've spent almost my whole life creating a persona of 'don't mess with me'. A sort of fearless veteran of foreign wars, battle scarred and defiant. Problem is, it's not working anymore.

I've been worrying. A lot. I'm finding that I'm on the verge of tears, on the verge of emotional a lot of the time. If I wasn't already in menopause, I'd say I was pre-menstrual. The downside of two years of therapy is that the old systems won't work. That terrible sick feeling I have when I have a conflict with someone I care for; that awful feeling of panic I get when I don't understand a situation used to be handled in a pretty simple way. Start a fight. For those of you don't know - picking a fight with someone is a sure way to resolve an unresolved situation. That adrenaline rush, that impulse driven heads down, dive into the fire approach has been my protection and life saver for 45 or so years. Adrenaline immediately stops the panic. The act of doing something, taking action (not always positive) was my path to calming down. Panic over.

Trouble is, this damn therapy has blocked off that escape route. And I'm
stuck not knowing how else to deal with the fact that at least half the
world runs away from difficult emotions, tough conversations, and from
those of us who would rather die than 'let it be'. Try and sit with the panic, my therapist said. How long does it take to go away? I'm 15 minutes into one and I'm hoping it'll be gone by the time I finish this blog.

Panic attacks are a strange thing to describe - except I'm having one right now so let me try. Sweat collects and turns my body temperature up, but I feel cold, there is a prickly sensation all over my body, my chest is constricted. I'm sitting here, my knees bouncing up and down, and my throat feels like I could throw up but I know I won't. My mind feels like a Rubik's cube on acid. My body aches, I feel like every part of me is on high alert, my mind won't calm down. I feel terrified but I have no idea of what.

I was the result of make-up sex. My mum and dad broke up for the first time 6 months after my older brother was born and then again 9 months before I was born. My mother's diaries are filled with ambivalence towards my father, and my father was plain spoken about his failings as a husband and father. I think my mum used to take me along as cover during her assignations. Her diary describes an intense affair with another man years before the birth of my precious little brother Ben, who I have come to understand really got the hardest start in life of all of us. I suppose in some ways, my tendency to mistrust anything around sex might be the result of watching my mother construct an entirely secret life and forcing me to collude in it.

I'm always wary of our tendency in this most self absorbed of cultures to lay every problem at the door of our parents, but it's clear to me now - 55 years into this jigsaw that something went horribly wrong and that my defense systems, forged early and deeply have protected and sabotaged me all at once. I've written in my blog before about how the simple act of being loved in a secure setting seems to elude me. About how the border collie in me is in perpetual motion trying to attain the simplest goal - to have the pack be at rest, as one. But someone always seems to be missing. The slightest withdrawal has the effect of causing the busy restless motion sensors to start jangling inside.

Comments

just keep breathin'

i think you know i am likewise afflicted with the panic you are describing. if you aren't you know you are always welcome to visit my blog and read some of the entries there talking about it. or email if you want to... i know i am still just a stranger to you but i don't bite, unless i am asked to anyway.

and if you are so inclined, a little xanax can't hurt during the worst part of it all.

I experienced panic attacks in the 1990s, including one major one in the car ala Tony Soprano, and I think they were my emotional system's way of dealing with a lot of stress (past & present). They finally stopped with the help of a good therapist and when I finally realized and believed that what happened in my childhood "wasn't all my fault."

I'm still distrustful of intimate relationships but at least I don't feel like driving off the road now.

I started to get panic attacks in 1997 when my first husband and I, before we were married, started looking for housing....in the suburbs!!!!!

I'm either a city girl or a country girl, non of that in-between shit. He had to pull the car over before I smashed into the hard and heavy sky that was pressing down ferociously on me. I couldn't catch my breath and felt helpless.

Did you notice that I qualified him as "1st" husband? I stubbornly refused to leave SF...but knowing how unhappily he accepted this kept me frozen. We talked. We fought. I blamed. He blamed. We got married.

For 11 months I would bolt awake in terror from dreams of drowning.

We went to therapy.

6 sessions into the therapy he left...the marriage. With just one trip in his car he had packed up everything he owned and moved to the suburbs.

I could finally breathe....Knowing this was probably not the healthiest side of my dark side, I chose to stay with the therapist to figure out not just how to keep air in my lungs but peace in my mind- even when I can't control the universe.